by Susan Meier
When she returned to the kitchen dressed in a pair of maternity jeans and a big T-shirt, Mildred was reading the paper, Owen on her arm. Seth was nowhere in sight.
“Did he come in?”
“Nope. And I made some sandwiches for lunch. Nothing fancy. Just tuna salad.”
“Tuna salad sounds wonderful right now. But I thought you guys were only going to help with Owen.”
“Mothering’s more than caring for the baby.” Mildred rose from her chair. “If you really want to make sure Seth doesn’t lose patience and hire a nanny before you’ve had enough time to learn how to care for your son, you have to make him see you can handle everything that pertains to this house on your own. Including cooking and cleaning. Since you’ve never really done anything like this, we’re here to fill the gap.”
Lucy relaxed. “Thanks. I’m glad Penney realized I would need help.”
Mildred laughed. “Lucy, sweetie. You couldn’t be in better hands. When Penney Gentry plans something, it works.” She walked to the door, but before she opened it, she turned and smiled. “Audrey Olsen is scheduled for noon.”
Lucy smiled appreciatively. “Thanks.”
Audrey Olsen was a thirty-year-old woman who had recently retired from Bryant Development’s accounting department to have her own children.
“It’s been three months since I quit and I’m not pregnant yet,” she told Lucy as she prepared a supper casserole at the counter by the stove. She hopped from cupboard to cupboard, choosing ingredients and her blond ponytail bounced perkily. “But three months is a drop in the bucket. I’ve got years.” She paused, and her head tilted in question as she looked at the well-stocked cupboard. “I’ve never seen a man who had so many spices.”
Watching Audrey bob from cupboard to cupboard, Lucy had seen all those spices, too; when she had, it had taken her at least twenty seconds to be able to breathe. After having had the unnamed feeling about Seth that morning, it was a slap of reality to realize her former husband didn’t merely have spices he also had four different pastas and ingredients for sauces. Preparing Owen’s bottles that morning, she had also noticed that Seth’s fridge held fresh vegetables. She knew a well-stocked kitchen was a big deal, and that any spice beyond salt, pepper and garlic powder meant there was probably a woman in Seth’s life.
Audrey chatted happily as she finished the casserole and slid it into the oven. Then she poured herself a cup of coffee and set it on the table, preparing for her time alone with Owen. “Okay. You go freshen up before we call Seth in for the sandwiches Mildred made,” she said, rubbing her hands together excitedly as if she couldn’t wait to hold the baby.
Lucy nodded. She refused to dwell on Seth with another woman. It would be foolish to think he hadn’t found someone else in all the time they had been apart. Besides, she certainly didn’t want to get involved with him again. He had committed to her, but the minute she was out of sight, he apparently had forgotten she existed. He had never so much as taken one of her phone calls, let alone thought of placing one himself.
No. She didn’t want him. She and Owen would be perfectly happy without him.
But given that he was Owen’s dad, Lucy also knew she had to adjust to seeing him—albeit only once or twice a year—for the rest of her life. When Seth arrived on Xavier Island to visit his son, it was also possible he could bring the spice girl who stocked his cupboards. Lucy might as well accustom herself now to the idea of Seth with another woman.
She rose from her seat to hand the baby to Audrey, but as she did, Seth pushed through the swinging door. Because he had showered and changed, he no longer wore the jeans and T-shirt she had seen him in that morning. Instead, he had on the same khaki trousers and dress shirt he had worn one of the days they’d spent at the site of her father’s Miami mansion.
Lucy froze as disjointed details of that day rolled through her brain. The sun had been hot. Ocean waves had lapped behind them. She and Seth had been married. They were two people passionately in love.
The reality of it poured through her. They had really thought they were in love, but she had reduced the intensity of their feelings to “lust” because that made everything easier to deal with. Seeing him in those clothes resurrected memories and feelings that she couldn’t deny or explain away. Feelings that made everything that had happened between them real again.
“Hey, Audrey,” Seth said, easily accepting the presence of another “visitor” here to see the baby and bringing Lucy out of her reverie and back to the present. “What’s up?”
“Not much,” Audrey said, taking the baby from Lucy’s hands.
“Are you staying for lunch?” he asked.
Seth turned to open the refrigerator and Lucy caught Audrey’s gaze. Audrey nodded that it was okay, and cautiously said, “Yeah. That would be great.”
“Good. While Lucy was busy with her company yesterday, I bought some deli meat and rolls. There should be pickles in the fridge. Want to get those out, Lucy?”
Lucy’s breath froze, but she managed to bring herself around quickly. “Seth, I…” she couldn’t quite lie and say she’d made the tuna sandwiches Mildred had prepared. So she amended her statement to, “There are already sandwiches made in the refrigerator. Tuna.”
Mustard in hand, he stepped away from the counter. “Oh.”
“Yeah, I didn’t want to go overboard.” She caught his gaze. A symphony of butterflies fluttered in her tummy. Not because she hated lying, but from trepidation. When she looked into Seth’s gorgeous green eyes, she always saw more than his words could ever convey. And right now, she could swear she was disappointing him. “You like tuna, right?”
“Yeah. Tuna’s fine,” he said quietly, his displeasure evident in his tone.
Lucy’s chest tightened. She’d never disappointed him. She’d angered him. Confused him. Made him laugh. Aroused him. But never disappointed him.
Still holding her gaze, he said, “I just thought you might want some help…”
“Some help?” Audrey interrupted with a laugh. “Our girl Lucy is a natural! She doesn’t need any help.” Audrey waved her hand as if pushing his concern away. “Seth, grab a sandwich and get back to whatever it is you need to do. Lucy is fine.”
He caught Lucy’s gaze again. “Is that true? Are you fine?”
She really hated lying so she only smiled, hoping that would pass for an affirmative response.
Seth drew a quiet breath. “Okay, then.”
When he was gone, Audrey sighed noisily. “That was a close one.”
Lucy said, “Yeah.” But the weight of Seth’s disappointment nearly suffocated her. Now that the memory of their visit to the site of her father’s Miami mansion had sneaked through her fortress of resolve to forget him, lots of other memories were sliding through, too. The most significant of them were recollections of Seth’s interactions with his employees. The very day Lucy met him, she had easily deduced from the way he treated his employees that he was a good person. Honest. Sincere. Hard-working. Yet here she was, deliberately deceiving him.
But she was doing it for good reason. And most of that reason didn’t pertain to him, but to her father. She needed to know how to care for Owen when she returned to Xavier. She wanted her son to know his mother. If she was deceiving Seth, it was for Owen. And she wasn’t really lying, or even cheating. She was simply hiding information from Seth and that wasn’t really wrong. It was more like self-preservation.
That evening Lucy was exhausted from keeping up the pretense with Seth. Caring for Owen wasn’t nearly as tiring as thinking up good reasons for so many visitors—especially visitors who were helping make formula, tending to Owen’s bath and keeping Seth away from his own son.
Still, all night she bounced out of bed every time Owen as much as whimpered. She didn’t want Seth getting the impression she couldn’t handle their baby. She needed this time to become competent at caring for Owen alone.
Monday morning when Penney arrived, Lucy was sorely in need of sl
eep again. But this time she and Penney didn’t have to fear Seth awakening and discovering their plan because he was leaving for work soon. Lucy stayed awake while he got dressed, chatting with Penney, who came over in the guise of dropping off some baby clothes. But after he left, she went right back to bed and slept away the morning. When Audrey arrived at two, she felt much better. Far less in need of a rest and more in need of a lesson or two about caring for Owen.
“That’s great,” Audrey said, “but I’m the one without a baby, remember? I can keep a kid happy for a few hours while you nap, but I can’t tell you all the great stuff Penney and Mildred know because of raising kids themselves. So, I guess what we need to do is shift me to mornings and have one of them come in the afternoon when you’ve got the time and energy to learn.”
Seth picked that precise second to walk into the kitchen. “Learn what?”
Caught, both Lucy and Audrey looked over at him as he walked to Lucy to take a peek at Owen before going to the counter that held the coffeemaker. Because it wasn’t any later than two-fifteen, neither one of them had expected Seth to return from work. Worse, he was dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans, as if he had been home for some time.
Audrey said, “Lucy was just going to run upstairs for a few seconds and I was assuring her that though I have no children of my own, I am perfectly capable of caring for yours for the ten or twenty minutes she’ll need to shower or whatever.”
But while Audrey spoke, Lucy sat transfixed. She understood why the familiar dress shirt and trousers from the day before had knocked her for a loop, but had absolutely no explanation for why the way he looked today was just as appealing. She supposed it was because in all their days in Miami, she had never really seen him look so casual or comfortable. She knew what he looked like naked. She knew what he looked like in a suit or even a dress shirt and jeans, directing a construction project when they had visited the site. But she’d never really seen him in casual clothes and it was beginning to overwhelm her. Not because he looked so male, but because he looked so normal.
That was it! That was the odd feeling she had had on Sunday morning! Seth didn’t merely look normal; he also made her feel normal! Blissfully, wonderfully normal! Not like a princess, just a woman. She had somehow forgotten that the biggest part of her attraction to Seth was that around him she wasn’t a royal. She was a woman. A woman he desperately wanted. Right from the beginning, she’d seen the spark of sexual attraction glowing in his green eyes and felt the answering attraction spiraling through her. It was pure. It was simple. And it had nothing to do with her as a royal and everything to do with her as a woman.
“Right, Lucy?” Audrey said, poking Lucy’s elbow. “I’m going to hold Owen while you take a few minutes to freshen up.”
Lucy drew in a quiet breath, wondering how long she’d been staring at her former husband and if any of the emotion she’d been feeling had shown on her face.
Audrey reached for Owen. “So, I’ll take the baby.”
“No,” Seth said, walking to the table where Lucy sat. “Let me. Between the company we had on Saturday and the visitors yesterday, I haven’t had a chance to hold my own son. I’ve lived here five months and never had a neighbor do more than say hello. But just put a baby in a man’s house and suddenly every woman in town pops in for a look.”
Lucy peered at Audrey and she shook her head slightly, as if saying Lucy shouldn’t make too much of Seth’s observation. Lucy nodded imperceptibly to show she understood, then loosened her hold on Owen as Seth took him from the crook of her arm.
Unfortunately, as he wrapped his big hands around Owen’s tiny body, his eyes met Lucy’s. What passed between them was stronger and more intense than the sexual tension they had always effortlessly generated. With their gazes locked and forearms brushing, Lucy recognized he was completely real to her again. He wasn’t a memory of four weeks of reckless passion. He wasn’t a guy she had worked with. He was the guy she had loved. Really loved. Loved with such passion and desperation she’d literally forgotten she had responsibilities to her country.
And if she didn’t believe it to be completely improbable, impractical and in some ways just plain stupid, she would wonder if she didn’t love him still.
But even if she did, it didn’t matter. He had been furious when she’d returned to Xavier at her father’s summons. When he hadn’t protested their annulment, it was clear he regretted having married a royal. Not only that, but he’d already replaced her with the spice girl.
As if to confirm that he didn’t want her anymore, Seth lifted Owen and quickly pulled away. “Audrey’s right, Lucy. You do need a break. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind cutting her visit short and I’m fine with Owen. Why don’t you take a nap?”
Audrey nodded and said her goodbyes.
Lucy rose slowly. Reminded of her royal responsibilities, which had increased since she had become the mother of Xavier’s future king, she knew she couldn’t give Seth an opening to prove she couldn’t care for their child.
Reaching for the baby again, Lucy said, “I’m fine.”
“Okay, then, how about this?” Seth said, losing patience with her. “I’d like some time with the baby and I’m taking it. You do whatever you wish.”
With that he turned and walked toward the kitchen door, but he stopped abruptly and faced her again. “Oh, and I’m making dinner.”
“That’s okay, Seth,” Lucy began to protest, but Seth stopped her.
“You’re a guest in my house.”
“But I’m perfectly capable of making dinner.”
Seth held his ground. “So am I. A person doesn’t grow up without parents without learning to cook.”
Though Lucy knew there was no future for them, understanding rippled through her. His parents had died when he was fifteen and he’d been forced to learn to cook or starve. That was why his cupboards were stocked.
There wasn’t any spice girl.
“I forgot you’d lived on your own since you were a child,” she said.
“With my two older brothers,” Seth corrected casually. “But it still made me a hell of a cook. I can also clean and iron, but my specialty is cooking. No one would starve in my house.”
Lucy couldn’t help it. She laughed at the seriousness of Seth’s tone. He was fighting her for the chance to make dinner. “All right, you can cook tonight, but just for the record, no one would starve at my house, either.”
“Not when you have maids,” Seth said with a chuckle.
She shook her head. “I don’t have maids. In fact, I no longer have staff.” She’d gotten rid of them to prepare everyone for seeing her caring for Owen on her own. “I had to keep my bodyguards, but otherwise I take care of myself.”
Paused by the kitchen door, Seth held her gaze. “You take care of yourself?”
“We seemed to do pretty well without a staff the weeks we lived together.”
The pained expression that came to his face confused Lucy. If it was so difficult for him to think of their marriage ending, why hadn’t he tried to save it? “Seth, why didn’t you answer any of my messages?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t get any.”
“Oh, come on. I couldn’t get out of bed when the morning sickness and tiredness first hit me, but I sent you several e-mails through my personal assistant.” In the last she had asked him—almost begged him—to meet her, but he had never answered, and that was why she stopped trying to reach him. In fact, that was why she had wondered if he even wanted to know about their baby. Getting involved with a princess clearly had been more than he’d imagined, and she was willing to let him off the hook since it appeared he wanted nothing to do with her.
“Never got them.”
Which meant he never knew how desperate she had been to see him. A horrible possibility crept into Lucy’s thoughts. There was only one person who could order her assistant not to send an e-mail. “Let me get this straight. You didn’t get any of the e-mails I sent after I left?”
Seth shook his head again. The expression on his face changed from pained to aware, and Lucy knew he’d figured out the same thing she had.
“Just like you didn’t get any of my messages, did you?”
She took a quick breath. He’d tried to contact her, too. “No. And don’t even bother accusing my father. Before you say the words, I’ll apologize for him. We both know he’s the only one with enough power to order the staff not to send an e-mail or to have an e-mail deleted before I saw it.”
Seth raked his fingers through his hair. “So you didn’t just leave me high and dry?”
“I would have never done that. I wanted to see you.” She had been aching to see him. Brokenhearted. Desperate. Hungry simply for the sight of him. And he might have been desperate to see her, too. “And you didn’t dump me for your decorator.”
Seth said, “What?”
“It’s nothing,” she replied, but she knew that wasn’t true. Without the anger that had separated them, they were the same two people who had made love two hours before her plane left for Xavier Island that fateful January afternoon.
“This is why you kept the baby from me until the last minute, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “When you didn’t meet me as I asked in my last message, I assumed you had gotten back to your normal life. And I knew your normal life didn’t include being the father of a future king. It was hard enough for me to accept that you didn’t want me anymore. I couldn’t handle having you tell me you wanted nothing to do with our child.”
“I would have never told you that.”
